By JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington bureau

Sen. Jack Reed will be in the vanguard tonight as the Democratic Party's leading voices on defense and foreign affairs make a case for Barack Obama as commander in chief.

They will also take aim at the Rhode Island Democrat's Senate Armed Services Committee colleague, Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

"Senator McCain seems to style the war in Iraq as beginning with the surge and ending with the surge, " Reed said today. He referred to President Bush's strategic increase of troops last year, which McCain had long advocated and which even skeptics such as Reed now concede has improved the situation in Iraq.

"In reality, the war began with his vote in 2002," Reed said. That was a reference to the congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. McCain, and a majority of Democrats, including vice presidential candidate Joe Biden of Delaware, voted for the resolution. Reed opposed it.

Reed did not say whether that line was a rehearsal of what he will tell a national TV audience tonight from the Democratic convention stage. "We will make the contrast between Senator McCain and Senator Obama," said Reed, mouthing with a smile the standard euphemism for political attacks.

Reed spoke in a brief interview at a downtown Denver hotel, looking trim and buttoned down for his day-long round of appearances at party gatherings and media events.

This will be a national introduction of sorts for Reed, who is already well known to Rhode Islanders and Washington insiders as a West Point grad and former Army Airborne officer who accompanied Obama last month on a closely-watched tour of tour of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reed did say he will try in his speech to move the debate away from the surge and focus on the foreign policy challenges of the future -- political ground where he thinks Obama has the edge over veteran McCain.